Rob Richardson wrote:
We have a customer who is running PostgreSQL 8.4 on a Windows Server 2003 box. The Postgres service is set up to store data on the computer's H drive, which is actually an iSCSI connection to a folder of a disk drive on a separate computer. The same computer that runs PostgreSQL also runs the Kepware OPC server. If a user needs to connect remotely to this computer to change something in the OPC server, he has to connect using "mstsc /admin". More often than not, when a user connects remotely using the /admin option, PostgreSQL will crash. The only indication of a problem left in the log file is a message saying that error 128 happened, which is a problem with a child process. It does not say which process, or what the problem was. The only reference we were able to find on the Web for this problem said that it went away when the user upgraded from 8.3.1 to 8.4. That was why we did the same upgrade. For us, the problem still exists. Has anyone else seen and fixed this problem?
I've been watching these various reports of MSTSC causing the postgres service process to crash, and must say I've very mystified as to what possible mechanisms could be involved. I should note, I almost exclusively run postgres on Unix (AIX, Solaris) and Linux (mostly RHEL/CentOS), but I am quite familiar with MS Windows Server innards from other contexts.
I do hope your description of the iscsi connection is somewhat vague and mildly incorrect. ISCSI targets (servers) are block devices, and usually serve either a disk partition or a single large file up as the logical unit to the iscsi initiator (your win2003 postgres server in this context). also, I would ONLY run a database across iscsi if the iscsi target/server is a really robust appliance kind of environment, and not some sort of adhoc "oh look, we have some spare space over here, lets just serve it up", as if you reboot that target machine, the initiator (client) is gonna throw a hissy fit.
The one thing that MSTSC /ADMIN does that might impact processes is notify all processes in the 'desktop session' that the display driver and resolution etc is changing, I believe via a WM_DISPLAYCHANGE. I can't see how this could impact a background service process, but if its service wrapper didn't handle this message well, perhaps thats a clue?
Does the 'new' version of Postgres for Windows packaged by EnterpriseDB have any sort of notify tray icon?
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